1. Field of Disclosed Subject Matter
This disclosure relates to systems and methods for automatically integrating with a customer organization to propose correcting defects and/or fulfilling supplies requirements for consumables in office devices that are monitored but that lie outside a managed service agreement.
2. Related Art
Local digital data exchange networks have become commonplace for organizations of all types. Individual user workstations are networked together and linked, via combinations of wired and wireless communication links to central servers and processing systems, remote data storage, and myriad components that may be used for communication external to the local digital exchange network of the organization. Certain of these components may be hosted as cloud-based components, particularly for data storage and processing.
For organizations that have document production and reproduction requirements, image forming devices connected to the organizations' local digital data exchange networks are employed as components of the networked systems that meet these requirements. Organizations may make use of large numbers and types of image forming devices to particularly meet both routine and special document production and reproduction requirements for the organizations.
Market pressures lead to competition among vendors that sell, support and service, or otherwise supply, office devices, and particularly image forming devices, to customer organizations. Customer organizations are afforded an opportunity, therefore, to shop for a best value for these devices. The best value may be determined by the customer organization to be based on purchase prices for the office devices alone. Otherwise, the best value may be determined to include a combination of office device purchase prices and other consideration including, for example, an office device managed service agreement or support contract with a particular vendor for the office devices purchased or procured from the particular vendor.
The above circumstances often lead to a customer organization purchasing and using a mixture of office devices from several different vendors, some of the office devices being supported by one or more of the vendors according to a managed service agreement, and others not being supported.
Many office devices, but particularly image forming devices, include consumable components (“consumables”). Some of these consumables are customer replaceable, depending on a complexity of the image forming device or system. Others of these consumables require, or benefit from, intervention by vendor service personnel for replacement or replenishment. As automation has increased, vendors have developed systems, which they offer to their customers as part of the managed service agreements that they may provide for the office devices that they sell or supply to their customers, to remotely monitor a status of those office devices, including monitoring consumable levels for the office devices. This monitoring is generally undertaken by a vendor's remote monitoring facility conducting a combination of wired and wireless communications with individually supported or managed office devices that may be accessed via the customer organization's local digital data exchange network.
Typically, an office device managed service agreement with a particular vendor covers only the office devices sold or supplied to the customer organization by the vendor. The vendor, therefore, does not manage all of the office devices at a customer organization's site. Regardless of this, the customer organization often affords the vendor with which the customer organization has executed a managed service agreement access for monitoring purposes to all of a particular class of office devices that include those office devices that the vendor sold or supplied to the customer organization and that are subject to the managed service agreement.